UMass ADVANCE’s Black Women United Announces 2023-24 Virtual Sessions for Mentoring Black Women on Campus

Building upon the initiative to support a peer network and increase advancement of Black women faculty members on the UMass Amherst campus, the Black Women United team will host three online sessions this fall and early spring titled Sister:Resisters that focus on mentoring Black women.

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Black Women United, part of ADVANCE’s Mutual Mentoring Grant Award program and Black Women Faculty, is an initiative that seeks to build and maintain a network of Black women peers and increase the advancement of faculty and drive institutional transformation to create environments where diversity is encouraged and supported. Last year, Black Women United worked to develop community among tenure-track and non-tenure track Black women and librarians. To grow and carry forward the program’s work, Black Women United now looks to expand its on-campus network to include Black women who work in staff and administrative positions at UMass Amherst, as well as continuing to connect with Black women who are new additions to the campus.

The first virtual Sister:Resisters session, “Mentoring Black Women on Campus,” will be held on Friday, Oct. 20 from noon-1:30 p.m.  The session will provide an overview on research into the experience of Black women academics in higher education, particularly at predominantly white universities; explain the mentoring model; define both optimal and suboptimal strategies of resistance; and provide a case study for application.

The second session, “Mentoring Black College Women,” will be held Friday, Dec. 1 from noon-1:30 p.m. The session will review research on Black women’s experiences as undergraduate and graduate students in higher education, particularly at predominantly white universities; integrate a mentoring model and resistance strategies developmentally for this age group with attention to social, psychological, and political factors that emerge on and off campus; honor the ethnic, class, religious and sexual diversity among Black college women; and provide case studies for application.

The final, workshop-style session, “Black Women’s Mentoring Tool Kit,” will be held on Feb. 16 from noon-1:30 p.m. This session is intended to build upon the tools that mentors have acquired during the first two sessions. A primary goal is to strengthen confidence in reading, naming, opposing and replacing gendered racism that impacts Black women faculty and students and can derail their success.

All sessions will be accessible via Zoom.

For more information about Black Women United and the 2023-24 ADVANCE Mutual Mentoring Grant Awards, visit the ADVANCE Program website or contact Cheryl Swanier at cswanier@umass.edu.